


The Disastrous Love Story of Aaron and Ann

by Corny_Tyrannosaurus



Series: Love Reel [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Child Neglect, Drama, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, References to Monsterverse, Romance, Teen Pregnancy, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24258250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corny_Tyrannosaurus/pseuds/Corny_Tyrannosaurus
Summary: Long before the twins, their parents had to deal with a hell-of-a-love-story on their own right. Years of hurt, chaos, but also love.
Relationships: Aaron Pines/Ann Pines, Dipper Pines/Mabel Pines
Series: Love Reel [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1549117
Kudos: 4





	1. Lonely Children

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jengis_Morrangis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jengis_Morrangis/gifts).



  * Pines Residence; Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. November of 1994…



She had been always a frail woman. She was sick almost the entire time, taking pills, assisting to so many doctors he couldn’t remember their faces, and when not, she was just tired and too weak to ever try to get out. But even in her weak state, she had been a happy person, a hopeless romantic, and the best mother she could’ve been.

She always made him to feel loved, to feel cared and respected despite their unfortunate circumstances, which were pretty much odd and highly unavoidable, indeed. Inside the little and humble basement in which they lived, almost never visited, almost ever being themselves alone, she made him to feel like her personal knight, the strong arm she needed to pass every day of her life. They played every time he went back from school, and their vacations were an epic home adventure of imagination and joy; she used to plan complicated campaigns of _Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons_ especially for him. She loved fantasy worlds, and he loved numbers; being put together, they made perfect team, just like they were. They had each other, and nothing else mattered. He could sometimes even ignore her weakness, she could even forget her fate, and the parody of a Life she got instead her dreams.

She had been, despite all her suffering and unavoidable fate, happy.

But now she had gone forever. And the only person he had now was the one he couldn’t count with the least.

He was now stuck with his father.

He was cold, arrogant, distant, maybe even neglecting. If his affection towards her was scarce enough to be part of the sadness she had to fight every day, towards his own son was practically nonexistent. Barely he spoke to him, and when he did, he limited himself to give him orders, or more scarcely to make unappropriated comments about him he cut dry when she looked at him with silent and sober rage. Practically he only knew three things about him: He was younger than a father normally should, he worked in the field on the medicine, and the worst one, that he hated him.

Barely eleven years old, and Aaron Pines had to fence himself from his own family. Barely eleven years old, and he understood perfectly the meaning of _ostracism._ He was completely alone, in a room full of people.

So there he was, standing in front of the living room; crying in silence as dozens of persons, known family members and unknown subjects he had never seen in his life, were wandering around as if he was invisible. Probably by instinct, he had stood in front of the wide window of the basement’s living room, in search of the least trail of warm; if he closed his eyes and was enough concentrated, he could imagine she could come to receive him and take him to play or read a story, but he hadn’t the braveness to comfort himself. He had the flower he was supposed to throw at his mother’s coffin still on his hands. He couldn’t throw it, he couldn’t just accept she had gone, because it was unfair, completely unfair. She had a bright heart, she was clever and beautiful and wise, she hadn’t enough time to enjoy life, she had never the least chance. To hell with what was supposed to be right and decent and manly; right now, the only Aaron wanted was to hug his mother and tell her that everything was going to be fine; but he couldn’t, because she had gone and nothing was going to be fine.

_Mommy…_

At scarce distance from him, the enough to be insulting, his father was talking with the rabbi. Much like a normal conversation, his father was unmovable, nodding and answering shortly everything the rabbi was saying in a way no one could suggest his own wife had just died. The heartless concentration of the rabbi’s tone, the even more heartless responses of his father, it was like a nightmare. Aaron was too soaked in his own pain to ever notice what were they talking about, and he really didn’t want to know; he knew it was going to hurt, as every word he had ever listened to come from his father. The least comfort he could take from all of this was that the crowd was distracting him from having to interact, but that wasn’t going to last forever. Eventually the people were going to leave the house, eventually he was going to face him for himself.

The rabbi made a last exchange of words and walked away, losing between the crowd, and Shermie turned to glance at his son. Aaron noticed his father was not talking to the rabbi anymore, and slowly raised his eyes to look at him, slowly and fearful.

His father walked some steps before to be in front of him, and his glance was everything but comforting.

His wide opened eyes, his dead flat lips, his protruding chin, all the kinds of expressions meant to be used in the face of an enemy in a fiery battle and that he was using against his own son right now with no consideration. His slightly stocky face features made the effect even worse; the Pines were famous among their community for their expressivity and courage, and Aaron couldn’t avail it more right now. He knew for his glance, he was going to hurt him, deeply as he only knew how to do it.

Suddenly, he raised a hand and took Aaron’s flower from his hands as strong as his arms followed the pull, leaving on his hands the cold feeling of chlorophyll staining them. Aaron hadn’t enough time to process what had just happened, when the same flower hit his face so strong he could’ve sworn he was just hit with a whip.

He opened his eyes in pure terror, pushing himself the most he could to look at his father; he was still having that frightful face and no one was coming to help him, he perfectly knew.

“Can’t you act like a man for once in your life?” He told his own son, turned around and walked away, losing between the countless persons which now were avoiding his presence.

Surely days like that were going to be happening in the future, surely no one was going to move a hand to help him.

Barely at his eleven years of age, Aaron Pines was made known he was alone in this world.

  * Westley Carwraith Orphanage; Boston, New Jersey. November of 1994…



It was moonlight night, and the usually dark attic was slightly illuminated by a weak white light; for a trained eye like hers, it was perfect to see clearly enough. The attic, regardless the time of the day, had that kind of illumination capable to make anyone to feel in home. For her, that was what precisely the attic was.

he little girl sneaked in, avoiding the creaking planks of the floor, dodging the huge, round table and the dirty red couch at the other side of the room. Tonight was a special night, her heart filled in braveness and blind will.

No child dared to put a foot on the place, not even Mr. Carwraith himself, so the place was dusty, filled with unused stuff, and more important, a safe place where she could be. It was not if like she was being hurt by anyone or something like that, but she wasn’t precisely the most popular girl there. Children avoided her enough for her to feel alone, teens ignored her, and Mr. Carwraith just looked at her like a number on a paper. For them she was too eager, too friendly, “a weird girl” by definition.

School wasn’t any better. Her first day an unfortunate bully proved her bow in the worst way possible, so children on her class (and the rest of school) feared her enough to not even dare to approach to her. It was nice to have authority, but the top was lonely, unbearably lonely. A few times she had tried to make friends and overcome her reputation, but things had gone enough bad for her to have to reaffirm her apex position. Sometimes bullies were just annoying.

So she liked to be where she couldn’t feel rejected, and how better place than a place with no people at all? There, inside her personal palace of forgotten items and broken furniture, she could drive her imagination wherever she pleased.

After classes, knowing no one was going to ask for her, she used to hurriedly siege herself there until it was the time for dinner. There she used to spend the noon looking for interesting items on the attic’s boxes, classifying them and deciding to adopt the ones she liked most. There was an old black shelf there with lots of old books, most of them encyclopedias and recipe books, but there were also some adventure novels, stories about brave heroes in far place saving everyone and being loved despite being the top.

She dreamed about not just be the though girl, to just be on a place. She had proved the taste of authority, and she had decided a long ago she didn’t like it. She wanted to be loved, to be cared about… to have a family. Every Sherlock needed its Watson, Every John Carter needed its Dejah, Every tough hero needed its reliable, a partner in crime, a people to be the hero for. Her own mother had disowned long before she even had learned to speak, and no offer to adopt her had ever reached a conclusion, so if a family wasn’t going for her, she was going for one.

She approached the chair near the attic’s round window, and put on knees, opening the old wooden box where she had stored her favorite items. It was quite big, but it had no much space, so she had elected the things she most wanted. There it was, her treasure, ready to go with her. She looked around the attic a last time, giving a slow sigh.

The place was her home, her basement, her lair. But she couldn’t just be there and wait for a chance to live. World was waiting out there, thriving in dangers, but also thriving in hope and people she could find which could love her for who she was. And she had more than anyone else to take it at its full ominous glory.

She smiled, and took a long breath to charge herself with urges for adventure.

_You’re gonna make it, Ann. You’ll make it._


	2. The Struggle of Growing Up

  * Boston, New Jersey. November of 1994, around 2:30 AM…



The ravenous, dirty-brown beast of rancid smelly gums and broken fangs had her cornered between a humid brick wall and a metallic cylinder, not taller than herself. Its serene steps against the splattered soil echoed in the walls of the concavity of sidewalk between the two buildings, its snarls feeling closer to her with every step. The smell of her blood made it to desire her flesh even more, It was ready to kill, it was ready to maul, it was ready to _feast_.

For her, mere seconds of proximity were the only thing sparing her from the most gruesome of deaths.

_Oh my god… F*ck!_

Well, streets were already much scarier than she had anticipated.

Ann’s escape from the orphanage was an easy task. She had only to wait until everyone were asleep to get out of her without being noticed. Weak mustering from a pair of friends in the room next to her made her to stop for a moment, to consider if she was doing right with this. But then she heard them giggling, and she reminded herself that she would never to have that; not there, at least.

So she went away running at the first step she made out of the main door; she didn’t even bothered in close the door behind there, she was sure no one would mind to look for her.

The first streets were an easy task, it was the zone near her school; nothing she hadn’t seen before. In her mind she made a mental list about what she had to do: to reach the bus station, staying there until the bus stopped in the terminal, getting out of there, and then pick the first bus out of Boston she could find. Her excuses for a 12-year-old going alone in middle of the night? Already practiced and put in action a few days she dared to go back from school a little minutes late; money? She had stored more or less $253 across three years of finding coins behind the common couch, sneaking in the teens’ rooms, and an innocent dollar Mr. Carwraith used to lose in thin air from his wallet; destiny? Glass Shard Beach, at least as a starting for her trip across the country. She was sure she could find temporary jobs, maybe even lost wallets, to make her way into adventure. Everything was info error margins enough calculated for her to do what to do if something was going wrong.

But, Ann was bad at math, and darkness proved to be betraying at the first streets out of her charted zone.

Dirty corners with strange, raggedy people who looked at her with unsettling desire in their yellowed eyes; Cranky people in cranky cars running wild back from they sure not-so-hard workdays; endless, _endless_ roads without sidewalks to use; and now, an enormous dog who had been chasing for her for so many streets of crazed run that she had no idea where in Boston she was anymore.

Yeah, maybe her adventure needed some weapons after all.

So she was there, hiding from the ravenous canid of foamy mouth, a trash can being everything sparing them from its bone-crushing jaws. Her arm was bleeding; she had escaped a bite, but the dog’s fangs had ripped its way in her skin as she pulled her arm back. Her precious backpack had been lost in the ensued fight; she could remember with great remorse the brief glance she saw to the moment the dog mauled her backpack behind her just enough to give her time to run before it resumed its chase. At least, her backpack had not died in vain… if she managed to get out of this.

Scared, cold, about to be eaten by a stray dog, and most probably with rabid. Definitively, this wasn’t the adventure she hoped for.

_Oh my god WHAT THE HELL I WAS THINKING?! Orphans aren’t put in orphanages out of nothing! This heck’ of a world is broken or something! Oh my god oh my god oh my god I’, gonna die…_

Her lips trembled, and her eyes rolled tears down her cheeks, when she heard the snarl of the dog right in her ear.

_I’m going to die._

Ann closed her eyes, ready to receive the jaws of the dog and acknowledge her head as crushed between them any second, when then…

_!Bang!_

She opened the eyes at the moment she heard the dog’s body hitting the floor like a potato sack, turning her head to see the dog, already dead. A bullet had passed through its head, its brain made pieces across the floor. Ann had never felt so disgusted and relieved at the same time, the punch in her stomach and the lightness of her head almost making to throw up, but…

_Wait, who…?_

She lifted from the floor, disbelieving the miracle. The lights of a car blinded her for a moment, but the next second she could see clearly who had saved her.

A farytale knight? An adventurous Indiana Jones? A wandering Marshall? Nah.

It was Mr. Carwraith, badly dressed with his accustomed brown flannel suit over his slender body, his hair messy and his face making a confuse glance of fairness and anger. A trembling revolver was in his left hand, sure the canicide weapon. One of the teenagers, whose name she would never summon or remember, was along him, too shocked to react. For a moment, everyone just stood still there, unable to move. Then Mr. Carwraith broke his shock, and walked furiously at Ann, more frighted than relieved now she knew she was in a serious trouble.

_Oh snap, no more pizza for me._

“What the hell where you thinking, Ann?! We’ve been looking for you for hours!!” Mr. Carwraith shouted at her furious and frightened at the same time, his hands grabbing her shoulders enough tight to reassure he was angry, but enough soft to betray the wariness behind his façade of anger. “If we hadn’t find you for the barking, you would be death right now!!”

“I… What do you care of, anyway?!’ She shouted back, violently turning away and walking a few steps away.

“What do – Are you serious?! We take care of you, Ann!” Mr. Carwraith shouted, barely a little softer, still in his fright. The teenager along him not giving credit to what was being seen; Mr. Carwraith was never angry, never at all.

“Lies!” Ann protested as she turned around to face Mr. Carwraith. “No one cares about me! No one talks to me! No one…” She stopped a moment, she was unable to say it without break down, but her already trembling lips were betraying her true feelings that moment. “No one loves me” She finally said, her voice cracked and deep.

“Oh, Ann I..” Mr. Carwraith began to say, when his bony arms wrapped around the child, and squished against his fist. He heard the muted sobs of the girl as he just caressed her head, her arms wrapping his dried body in turn. “Ann, we… We don’t… Just… Stay with us, please?”

“WHY?!” She shouted, still crying without control.

“Ann… Look, I know this is no easy. I’ve been running this place since long before any of you were born, and I know it’s not precisely a home for many of you, damn you’re more than thirty little cranky people at my care” he said as he chuckled briefly “but I’m here to help all of you to find one, that’s why I do this” Mr. Carwraith said softly.

“I’m twelve, I know my chances are already dropped” Ann replied in defeat, turning her face to watch Mr. Carwraith’s.

“A home comes in many shapes, Ann. Not always what we expect, but sure always what we need” He said, caressing the girl’s head. “Look at me. All of you are my home. I know you’ll go away some day, I want that for you, but I’ll be glad to had known I made something for my family”

“Even for the cranky ones like me?” Ann, said, a weak smile being drawn in her face.

“Specially the cranky ones” Mr. Carwraith answered in a way that was much softer than any of the children at his care had ever seen.

Ann sniffed, and her smile widened. Maybe the orphanage was not quite her home, but she was safe, and she was not alone. Maybe her quest to find a home hadn’t to start in the wild wild world. But then her smile lowered, knowing the result of her next question. “Aaand I’m grounded, I’m not?”

“Supergrounded” Mr. Carwraith answered with a malevolent tune and a rised eyebrow. Still, she was happy to know it. “But first we must go to the hospital, I’m sure you got rabid” He said as he and Ann walked out of the street, the teenager more bewildered than ever. In the mind of little Ann, an idea was forming. World out there was wild and unforgiving; if she wanted to find her home, she had to know how to protect it. And the revolver of Mr. Carwraith had given to her, a very good idea of where to start…

  * Gravity Falls, Oregon. April 1st of 1995.



The road was silent, filled in terror and despair. But being fair, the last 5 months had been exactly in this way every day. Aaron didn’t figured the whys of his father, he really didn’t want to, but a simple question had plagued him all this time.

_Why?_

This last five months, Aaron had been basically like the mouse of the house. He was alone in every sense of the word, physically and emotionally. His father went to his business in the outside world very early, and disappeared the whole day, not a word, not a simple paper sign in the frig; absolutely nothing. And when he went back, late in the night, if Aaron had the dumb idea of receiving him, all he could hope to receive back were multitudes of objects (oftenly heavy) to be thrown at him as he was being yelled to go to sleep.

The rest of his life was even worse. His father miscarriaged every other need beyond rational conclusions. He only brought food for himself, he only washed his own clothes and cleaned the first floor of the house, and didn’t even bothered to look for his son’s school schedule. So Aaron had to be specially clever. He had to pay special attention to when his father was not at home, when he was in chances to keep his needs in check. He rationed the food he allowed himself to eat, he used the lowest portions of soap he could use to keep his clothes clean and be sure to never make any noise when his father was at home. Because, if food seemed to finish too soon, if the soap bottle was too empty, if a single childish sound was heard in the house… hell came upstairs, ready to fall upon him. When his grands were to visit them, every month, he was specially menaced to hide his bruises, to not appear scared, to not eat too eagerly, to not make the slightest hint of his actual state; because, if his grands were to make the slightest question to his father about if Aaron was ok… well, hell could get even worse.

Aaron was a prisoner of his own home, one that was specially dedicated to be tortured and punished for the mere fact of exist. There was not a single day in which his father didn’t remembered that all was his fault, not a single occasion they interacted that a cruel statement wasn’t made to him. He had to remember, every day of his life, that everything was his fault and that he should die because he was a burden for everyone.

That, until a Saturday of March that Grandpa Filbrick casually met with one of Aaron’s teachers in the grocery store, and that teacher, in a very innocent and unsuspecting way, asked why his grandson hadn’t gone back to school in January with everyone else. That moment, he felt the curious urge to go to visit his youngest son at a very few squares of the store. He nicely waved off his old poker friend, went inside his car the softest he could, and followed the urge. The feeling made itself more intense as he approached his son’s house; he was trying to ignore it, but something wasn’t feeling good, something he was ignoring was horridly wrong.

His old heart hadn’t a chance to process his feeling, when at the moment he parked his car, a lamp crashed through the house’s window and broke against his car’s hood. The he heard Aaron’s terror screams, and Shermie’s yelling insults, and as he ran thru the house’s stairs the door opened and… Well, Aaron remembered what happened next. By now, he didn’t want to recall that; he was unsure if to feel relief was something he could allow himself to do.

Still, Grandpa Philbrick had showed something that he hasn’t experienced in a long time: kindness.

… Or maybe, it was guilt.

Anyway, as much as he would like it, he couldn’t stay with them. Grandma Caryn had been very sick these days, and after what happened with their own son, Filbrick had become very untrustful towards anyone else in the family. Many had noticed it, and no one had done anything. So, in the meanwhile he wasn’t available to take care of his grandson himself, he could only rely in the other single person in Earth he could trust now; even if he had to cross the entire country to reach him.

The cities turned into towns, the towns in endless roads, the roads into new cities, that after a while disappeared behind dense pine tree forests, every time higher and darker. Then the forested valley, closed behind a broken wall of rock like some sort of fallen fortress for some sort of ancient and bygone giants. They stopped for some snacks in a little grocery store aside the statue of a man with a flag, and suddenly they were in the woods again. Before he could know, the car had stopped near a cabin in the borders of the dense forest.

“Well, we’re here” Grandpa Filbrick said with friendly aims. Aaron just nodded, took his backpack, and went out of the car.

The air was kind of… warm, but not a physical warm, but more like a feeling. A strange feeling was instantly noticed by Aaron, this was not any place, this was a _place_. A good one? A bad one? He couldn’t trust enough yet. A quite old man came out from the door whose sign above could be read as “gift shop”, and received Grandpa Filbrick with a warm hug. He was dressing a black suit, and a curious red fez in his head, his squared glasses matching with his grandad’s; but, at the same time, his feet were wearing a pair of slippers, God would know that looked comical, if Aaron only would have forces to smile. Father and son exchanged some words, laughing with a brief joke, and then the old man walked towards Aaron.

“Hey there, kid” The man said with raspy but friendly tune, extending his hand. Aaron doubted a little.

“He’s your uncle, Stanford” Filbrick introduced the man.

“A-Aaron” the child introduced himself, weakly extending his hand to salute his uncle.

“You will stay with him a few months, ok? He will take care of you until your Grandmother feels better, ok?”

Aaron knew that was just _partly_ true. Yeah. Grandpa Caryn was sick, but also… He knew that glance in Grandpa Filbrick. He had seen it the day they were at the hospital, given to his father, had seen it the day they buried his mother, when he looked from a corner when his father slapped him with the flower, and he was seeing it now, right in front of him camouflaged with a smile.

_Burden._

He knew Grandpa Filbrick beared a burden of guilt since he met him for first time, a burden that had gone harder and harder to bear over the years. Aaron didn’t know why, he didn’t want to think about it, but a certain part of him knew it had to do with his own father, _his_ son. Not quite like the rage any grandfather could have, but more like… sorrow?

Anyway, it was useless. And he didn’t want to know _why_.

Aaron just nodded in silence, not knowing what to feel for this man anymore, the one who had taken him away from his personal torturer but at the same time had done nothing to stop him, just like anyone else in the Pines family.

Then Grandpa Filbrick gone, and suddenly he and the old man in black suit and slippers were alone in front of this strange cabin in the woods. He scratched his neck s he turned his head to see his nephew, and after a long sight, made the necessary introduction.

“So… What’s up, kiddo? You hungry?”


End file.
